Think your city’s pretty smart? Allow finance site WalletHub and king of lists to be the judge.
Each year, WalletHub combs through education data to determine which of the nation’s 150 largest metropolises are home to the most (and least) educated. To develop the rankings, WalletHub considers things like the number of residents with bachelor’s degrees, public education quality, and even the gender education gap.
As the site notes, education levels are a very big deal for municipalities. We know education and earnings are directly correlated.
“Cities want to attract highly educated workers to fuel their economic growth and tax revenues. Higher levels of education tend to lead to higher salaries. And the more that graduates earn, the more tax dollars they contribute over time…”
So which locales having bragging rights when it comes to academic prowess? Without further ado, we present the five most educated cities in California:
1. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA (ranked No. 3 nationally)
2. San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA (ranked No. 5 nationally)
3. San Diego-Carlsbad, CA (ranked No. 20 nationally)
4. Santa Rosa, CA (ranked No. 36 nationally)
5. Sacramento--Roseville--Arden-Arcade, CA (ranked No. 53 nationally)
See full rankings and methodology here.
Data is compiled and reported by WalletHub. Report does not reflect statistics on all 482 California cities.